The Wii was absolutely full of casual focused fare like Carnival Games and Petz and a million bad Wii Sports knock-offs and stuff like that.
So was the PS2, and the PS1. When a system sells a billion units and development costs are low it's going to get that kind of stuff regardless of "image."
You missed the point, YES PS2 had tons of casual games DUH, it ALSO, as in IN ADDITION to the casuals had all as in every, hard core game released. That is entirely different really how can you not see that? Nobody is denying that Wii selling millions didn't help attract all the casual fluff that flooded it but UNLIKE the PS1/PS2 there was not that much of the traditional gamer stuff outside of the FEW Nintendo games that weren't casual focused and a few super popular multiplatform games. Wii was too flooded with casual crap weather you liked the casual stuff or not is a different story, maybe calling it crap is wrong but the point stands yes there were plenty of shovelware on Playstations 1 and 2 so what is the difference/ they had Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Twisted Metal, Kingdom Hearts, Grand Theft Auto, the list goes on and on, whereas Nintendo DIDN'T.
You can call it strawman all you want go back and read this very forum and you will see he is right, my god is your memory that bad? It wasn't literally everyone making those points but it was the prevailing mood for sure.
Everytime someone would bitch about Game Cube most would bring up it's superior specs, not everyone but most, enough that it made it appear as if that was the image. Nintendo doesn't only make casual fluff we all know that but the general public doesn't know that because even the few rare, and obscure non-casual game that does get released on the system gets lost in the sea of casual stuff.
The debate in Game Cube years was defining casual games, as there was a lot of contention over the level of depth a game supposedly had to have, again we are talking over all image not individual cases so using broad generalizations MATTER when you are talking about overall image, unless you are so blind you can't see outside your narrow view.
Even if you don't agree that the image is justified, does it not exist?
It does because you keep bringing it up so someone believes in it. However, it's hardly the majority opinion regardless of how much you weirdly and obsessively want it to. Nintendo has been making video games for well over 30 years and you think one generation has "cemented" this casual image? The prevailing attitude toward Nintendo is that people buy Nintendo hardware for Nintendo games... and pretty much nothing else. Is that sustainable? Yes. For $300+? Nope.
Wii U is selling poorly because collectively, it's been a mess since launch, inexplicably so. It's sad when folders on the menu screen is exciting news for the console.
I am guessing you never go to ANY OTHER website if you don't think it is the MAJORITY opinion. How else do you explain the low sales yes image does matter, justified or not image matters a lot, even if you personally disagree with the image you can't deny it exists in the masses collective minds.
I don't care if the specs are current or not, SNES and maybe Game Cube are the only two examples where Nintendo had a clear undeniable advantage in specs and those weren't their best selling consoles so clearly specs don't matter to everyone as much as they say, however, to be fair even those two cases the gap was not nearly as big as it is now. With SNES you had to look at the games side by side under a microscope in just the right conditions to tell which was 'superior' and in many cases they were close enough or nearly indistinguishable to most people, that isn't case TODAY where we have emulators and flat panel displays and other tools to improve the image on a normal tv back in the 90's in typical lighting conditions without doing side by side comparisons it was damn near impossible to just tell which was better because in most cases they weren't that different. Game Cube was similar, it had noticable avantages and it had noticable disavantages but if was still under normal conditions most people couldn't tell the difference and even today we have to rely on tweaked screenshots to "prove" the point.
Wii U is entirely different there is NO DENYING that it is not physically capable of doing what PS4/Xbox One can do, that doesn't mean it is bad or sucks or terrible but it is NOT on par with the other two. You could make a case, as some of you have tried, that they are in different markets anyways which I would almost accept but not really, if you have to go to the store and decide which one you are going to buy and you are weighing them against each other then they are comparable.
I also think he is right, check ANY top ten list of N64 games MOST NON-Nintendo centric sites put Goldeneye damn near the top if not the top spot. Even Nintendo centric sites it always gets a pretty favorable mention as does usually Perfect Dark and people still say Sin and Punishment is the "best game" on the system and it was a travesty it didn't get translated back in the day. Those are not all FPS games but there were enough games in that style to satisfy those gamers, fighting game and RPG fans were really the only ones who missed out owning an N64 every body else was well represented. It is not the case on Wii or even now with Wii U.
You said it has always been Nintendo fans buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games, NO because when Nintendo was new they were just that, NEW, the big boys were Atari and Commodore. Nintendo had to win people over, sure they didn't have to do much except oh promise to BUY BACK every unsold console if it failed, a pretty big gamble. People forget NES was a HUGE stroke of pure luck, Genesis kicked SNES ASS until SEGA threw in the towel to focus on Saturn, up to that point Genesis sold year over year more than SNES it was NOT until Sega quite that SNES pulled ahead and even then it took a massive push from Nintendo to remind people to "keep waiting" for the Ultra 64 just one more year, while everyone else was running out to buy a PS1. Wii was like NES it was pure luck plain and simple, everything they do is pure damn luck because nobody can explain why it works one time but then it doesn't a second time.
YES I know in the end SNES dominated Genesis but not until Sega gave up, saw that Saturn was failing to meet expectations and tried miserably to give it a second chance did they realize they missed their mark.Revisionist history tells it like SNES just walked all over Genesis which is flat out false.
Wii U is doing poorly because this time whatever forces out there that decide these things said no, pure dumb luck. Sony knows what they are doing, they recognized the mistake they made with Ps3 and refused to repeat that mistake and hey it worked, as predicted. IF Nintendo did exactly what Sony does everytime, which they NEVER HAVE, they would be on top because as we all know with their 1st party giants *and* strong 3rd party support there would be no stopping them ever, oh well maybe next time, in three years, they can get it right, if the stars line up again, since it is LITERALLY too late to fix it, there is no way they can compete with PS5 (if there even is one) with exact specs no short cuts to sacrifices , they will never do that ever, if they were capable of it, or willing to, they would have done so every time.